Grenfell Mat: Coastal Schooner Seat Cover1935–194518 x 20 "Dyed silk and rayon on burlapGift of Marilyn Bottjer2016.17.10hooked rug
1557535417Artist unidentifiedTextilesCanadaNewfoundland and LabradorTextilesPaula Laverty, Silk Stocking Mats: Hooked Mats of the Grenfell Mission, McGill-Queen’s University Press (2005).
The two textiles being offered to the museum were made through the efforts of the Grenfell Mission that was established by Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell in the early 20th century in Northern Newfoundland and Labrador. In an effort to improve the economic conditions of the local people, the Mission distributed rug kits with designs of local interest such as fish, sailing ships, icebergs, sea gulls, reindeer, puffins, and dog teams to the women of the coastal areas who created the popular mats using recycled materials, often silk stockings that they dyed. In 1994 the American Folk Art Museum presented the trailblazing exhibition Grenfell Mats, the first major museum exhibition to examine this textile tradition. Guest curator, Paula Laverty, authored a small catalog to accompany the exhibition and an article in Folk Art Magazine, Winter 1993/94, pp. 52-59. She has since become the leading authority on the hooked textiles produced by the Grenfell Mission and author of Silk Stocking Mats: Hooked Mats of the Grenfell Mission. These two Grenfell mats are discussed and/or illustrated in this publication. The first mat, perhaps intended as a seat cover, illustrates a type of coastal schooner called Labrador Traders by the local community. They provided an important link between the people of Labrador and points south. Labrador Traders ranged in length from 50 to 70 feet, and sported two or three masts. The fore and aft rigging on each mast allowed easy navigation through the small channels of local ports.Schooners sailed out of Quebec and Halifax each spring and fall for Harrington Harbour, a community on Quebec’s Gulf of St. Lawrence, where seamen would purchase the season’s fish catch from local merchants, and deliver it with other provisions to remote settlements. This mat features identifiable landmarks in the harbor of Bill Anderson’s store and stage on the right, and Charles Bobbit’s store on the left. The two were local Harrington men who “fished the cod trap” all their lives. According to Laverty, the Mission hospital in Harrington Harbor was the largest English settlement on the Canadian Labrador. The hospital, established in one of the least accessible parts of the Quebec coast, was funded entirely by the Canadian branches of the Grenfell Mission. The Industrial producing the mats was established by the 1930s.Information from Paula Laverty, Silk Stocking Mats: Hooked Mats of the Grenfell Mission.Narrative Threads: Crafting the Canadian Quilttimes http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/index-eng.jsp]Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org19351945 2016 17 1 The two textiles being offered to the museum were made through the efforts of the Grenfell Mission that was established by Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell in the early 20th century in Northern Newfoundland and Labrador. In an effort to improve the economic conditions of the local people, the Mission distributed rug kits with designs of local interest such as fish, sailing ships, icebergs, sea gulls, reindeer, puffins, and dog teams to the women of the coastal areas who created the popular mats using recycled materials, often silk stockings that they dyed. In 1994 the American Folk Art Museum presented the trailblazing exhibition Grenfell Mats, the first major museum exhibition to examine this textile tradition. Guest curator, Paula Laverty, authored a small catalog to accompany the exhibition and an article in Folk Art Magazine, Winter 1993/94, pp. 52-59. She has since become the leading authority on the hooked textiles produced by the Grenfell Mission and author of Silk Stocking Mats: Hooked Mats of the Grenfell Mission. These two Grenfell mats are discussed and/or illustrated in this publication. The first mat, perhaps intended as a seat cover, illustrates a type of coastal schooner called Labrador Traders by the local community. They provided an important link between the people of Labrador and points south. Labrador Traders ranged in length from 50 to 70 feet, and sported two or three masts. The fore and aft rigging on each mast allowed easy navigation through the small channels of local ports.Schooners sailed out of Quebec and Halifax each spring and fall for Harrington Harbour, a community on Quebec’s Gulf of St. Lawrence, where seamen would purchase the season’s fish catch from local merchants, and deliver it with other provisions to remote settlements. This mat features identifiable landmarks in the harbor of Bill Anderson’s store and stage on the right, and Charles Bobbit’s store on the left. The two were local Harrington men who “fished the cod trap” all their lives. According to Laverty, the Mission hospital in Harrington Harbor was the largest English settlement on the Canadian Labrador. The hospital, established in one of the least accessible parts of the Quebec coast, was funded entirely by the Canadian branches of the Grenfell Mission. The Industrial producing the mats was established by the 1930s.Information from Paula Laverty, Silk Stocking Mats: Hooked Mats of the Grenfell Mission.Narrative Threads: Crafting the Canadian Quilttimes http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/index-eng.jsp]Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org